A Call to Action for an Impact on Rolling Fork, Mississippi

Many of us are aware of the unusual and powerful tornado in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on March 24, 2023. Officials said that 25 people had been killed as a result of the storm. The news media estimates the tornado, which began hitting western Mississippi on Friday night after it formed over the Mississippi River, traveled approximately 59 miles and lasted about an hour and ten minutes.

The tornado developed from a supercell storm—a rotating storm where the updraft and the downdraft are separated. It is caused by warm, unstable air near the ground and changing speed and direction of the wind at increasing heights. According to the News Weather Service, these storms are some of the least common but the most destructive.

Drone videos show recovery underway, but it is a long road to recovery in Rolling Fork, but the strength and perseverance of the rural community are evident.

This news was devasting. Many of us were praying that God would intervene, and God did, but there is something we can and must do to intervene in this devastating circumstance. The Western New Orleans Baton Rouge District of the Lousiana Conference of the Eighth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, under the energetic and scholarly presiding elder, the Rev. Bland L. Washington, Sr., and his queenly wife, Mrs. Brenda Washington, decided on a call to action to make an impact on Rolling Fork with 84 gift cards from Walmart which were delivered to the Reverend Reginald Anderson of the Shiloh Baptist Church which was one of the delivery locations to help for the people of Rolling Fork.